Researcher describes 'a holocaust by bullets"

Published 1:00 am, Wednesday, March 4, 2009

FAIRFIELD -- The photo was a souvenir, Patrick Desbois explained. One of its subjects, the soldier holding the gun, sent it to his lover as a memento of the war.

In the picture, the sender, a German soldier, holds his gun on a woman clutching a baby. In the background, a group of people dig a grave, likely their own. The tableau is framed by hundreds of people lingering at its edges, looking on, doing nothing.

The scene depicted in the photo was a typical one during the early 1940s, Desbois told an audience of roughly 100 people gathered at
Sacred Heart University
in Fairfield on Wednesday afternoon.

The woman, her baby, and the grave diggers were likely among the 1.5 million Eastern European Jews killed by Nazis during World War II.

Unlike the more familiar system of genocide practiced in concentration camps during the war, the Eastern European extermination involved gangs of Nazis who would round up local Jews and shoot them to death, often as they were standing in the hole that would soon become their grave.

It's a little-known, but still devastating, chapter of the Holocaust that remained more or less closed for about 60 years. A few years ago, Desbois, a French Catholic priest, began traveling to the areas where these tragedies occurred, interviewing hundreds of survivors and witnesses, and trying to find the mass graves where the slaughtered were buried.

The Eastern European slaughter was far simpler, and, in many ways, far scarier than the atrocities of the concentration camps, said Desbois, who is also director of the

"There were no camps," he said. "No trains, no uniforms. Just shot after shot."

More often than not, the victims would be shot only once, since the Nazis had to ration their bullets. "This was catastrophic for the Jews," Desbois said. "Most were only injured and were buried alive."

Desbois' work is the subject of his book "Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews," which won the 2008 National Jewish Book Award.

Since 2004, he and his organization Yahad-In Unum (a combination of the Latin and Hebrew words for "together") have interviewed more than 800 eyewitnesses and identified more than 900 mass graves. Their search started in Ukraine and expanded to Belarus.

Desbois said he plans to widen his search to Russia and Poland in the near future.

His work uncovering the truth of the Eastern European holocaust was spurred by personal experience. In 1942, his grandfather was deported to
Rawa Ruska
, a German camp for Soviet prisoners of war, located in what is now the Ukraine.

His grandfather returned and spoke little of what happened. But Desbois said what the older man did say was haunting.

"One day he finally told me, 'Inside the camp, it was awful. There was nothing to eat, nothing to drink. But outside the camp was worse,'" Desbois said.

The stories he's heard from survivors and witnesses have fleshed out what his grandfather told him. He's heard of people watching others in their village - often people they knew - be slaughtered or carted away to be killed.

The souvenir photo, one of several he displayed in a brief slide show during his talk, is an example of the killings that occurred in Eastern Europe.

All of the Jewish people in the photo are about to be shot, Desbois explained, except for possibly the baby. The baby likely would have been buried alive. That's why the mother is clutching the child - she's hoping the bullet used on her will strike the baby as well, saving it from a slow death by suffocation.

The people at the edges are townspeople, bystanders, watching the whole scene unfold. Unlike the concentration camp murders, Desbois said, the Eastern European slaughter took place in public, where everyone could see it.

"That's why we find so many witnesses," he said.

Many of the people he's spoken to have been silent for decades. However, Desbois said, most of them have taken the opportunity to share their stories when he and his team have approached them.

No matter what they tell him, "my main purpose is not to judge. It's just to find out what happened."

Those attending included
Betty Deustch
, 81, of Fairfield, herself a Holocaust survivor, who was only a teenager when she and her family were taken from their home in Hungary and carted to the concentration camps. She survived but lost her parents and many other relatives during the war.

Deustch said she read about Desbois' talk in the newspaper and wanted to come. She'd heard of the genocide in Eastern Europe, but not in the detail that Desbois presented it.